I hated my father’s stinginess. I had everything I needed, but my wants were always a problem. Then, when I was in my mid-twenties, things changed. By that point, I was financially independent and hadn’t asked for mall money in quite some time. But I was going to grad school, and suddenly my father was offering. “Whatever it is, I’ll take care of it.” That’s what he said about anything I needed. No, not needed. Wanted. No strings. No questions asked. I knew something was terribly wrong.

Mr. Heffernan, 40, approached the exercise in a way that befits an M.B.A. who had spent a year working at Bain Consulting. “We looked at the numbers, which were just staggering,” he said. “Socks, particularly colored socks, were up, gloves were up, scarves were up, even ties were up.” Everything was up, that is, except belts. “We thought, surely this is a sleeping giant,” he said.

In January, the couple launched Beltology, an online-only brand devoted to giving the least-noticed, least-talked about and least-fetishized accessory in menswear its proper place of worship. “We want to do for belts what Swatch did for the wristwatch back in [1983],” said Mr. Heffernan.

Unfortunately, the three middle-aged children who received this critical email from their "bitterly disappointed" father, a retired Royal Navy officer named Nick Crews, may not be able to say the same.